U.S. complains to India over ship

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32783, 7 December 1971, Page 17

U.S. complains to India over ship

<N. Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) WASHINGTON,December 6. The United States, which holds India mainly responsible for the widening war with Pakistan, has complained sharply to the Indian Government over the bombing and strafing of a United States merchant ship in the East Pakistani port of Chittagong.

The week-end incident, in which the captain and two crew members of the 7850-ton Buckeye State were injured, heightened the friction between the United States and India over the war on the sub-con-tinent. Two Greek-owned cargo ships, the 7289 ton Agios

Stylianos and the Liberianregistered 5605-ton Tarseus, were strafed by Indian aircraft while off the East Pakistan coast, according to Athens reports. Three members of the Stylianos’s crew wereinjured. The Secretary of State (Mr William Rogers), who spent the-week-end directing United States diplomatic moves aimed at a cease-fire, telephoned the Indian Embassy to protest against what the State Department called indiscriminate bombing and strafing of the American ship as it lay at anchor. News of the attack on the Buckeye State and the diversion by Indian authorities of another United States merchant ship, the 6450-ton Expediter, near the coast of West India and West Pakistan, came the day after the State Department publicly pinned the blame on India for the intensifying war in South Asia. A high State Department official dose to Mr Rogers issued an unusually blunt denunciation of the Indian Government, 1 accusing it of intransigence and policies that systematically led to a worsening of the situation and a broadening of the war. The strong criticism of India indicated the exasperation and frustration of the United States Government, which unsuccessfully sought by quiet diplomacy to restrain the two parties to the South Asia conflict. The United States considered that India must bear the major responsibility for the war because of its refusal to co-operate with any of the series of proposals made by the United States Government in recent weeks designed'to keep the two sides apart While the White House has not joined publicly in the critidsm of India, a spokesman said that President Nixon viewed with dismay the crossing of borders by troops on the sub-continent The White House Press Secretary (Mr Ronald Ziegler) declared that "India has launched an extensive movement of 1 forces into East Pakistan.”

The United States criticism of India has been/described

as a distortion of facts by the Indian Ambassador in Washington, Mr Lakshmi Kant Jha, who said that the United States proposals to prevent a war were onesided in favour of Pakistan.